Finding Neverland too loud

You can't miss Finding Neverland – turn right at Harvard Square and follow the din coming from the Loeb Drama Center now through the end of September. The American Repertory Theater is presenting a new musical about Scottish author J. M. Barrie, his encounter with the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and her four boys, and the genesis of the stage play Peter Pan. Barrie is a sympathetic character throughout the show, so credit must be given to performer Jeremy Jordan and the story arc provided by James Graham. But the music of Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy is a tidal wave of post-80s power pop that jars with England of the the early 1900s.

I was optimistic with my first peek into the orchestra pit. The violin, viola, cello, flute, reeds, trumpet and trombone suggested a chamber music setting that would evoke the style of the era. But then I saw the rack of electric guitars and the listing of three keyboard players and two percussionists. The score is firmly grounded in the punchy contemporary Broadway soundscape – more Wicked than Secret Garden. 

And, my god, this show is loud. Let me amplify: THIS SHOW IS LOUD! The volume level could easily fill an arena, and the body mikes rob the performers of a sense of direction. The actors might be left or right, but their disembodied voices, even in dialogue, hover somewhere above center stage. There was a quiet moment in the second act between Barrie and the young Peter Davies with a poignant silence that could have played on forever. But the moment soon devolved into a ballad; why do musicals have to do that?

The stagecraft admirably bridged the transitions from Edwardian reality to the surreal fantasy of J. M. Barrie's imagination. The finest scene was a five-minute recreation of the opening night of Peter Pan in the Davies's home. There was low-tech magic (bodies took flight when other actors picked them up and carried them) and high-tech magic (a glitter cyclone!) that left me wishing A.R.T. had just performed Barrie's original play instead.